In hospitals or long-term care facilities, care-givers often need to reposition bed-bound patients to reduce the likelihood of the bed-bound patients getting conditions such as decubitus ulcers or bedsores. Repositioning a bed-bound patient typically requires multiple care-givers to manually move the patient into a different position. This may be particularly difficult for care-givers to do for elderly bed-bound patients whose joints have stiffened, as well as for overweight patients because repositioning these patients requires extensive effort by the care-giver.
Accordingly, a need exists for alternative devices and methods that provide assistance in the posture transfer of a patient that requires little intervention or assistance from the care-giver.